his hand and a crown on his head, saying, "to your exertions in the colonizing cause I am indebted under God for all those honours which I now enjoy and hope to enjoy through eternal ages."

Sir, permit me to cherish such a prospect rather than to possess the wealth of a Cræsus, or wield the sceptre of a Cæsar, or be borne in the triumphal car of an Alexander, or occupy the throne of the most magnificent Monarch upon, the earth.

DAVID M. REESE, M. D., of New York, offered the following resolution:

Resolved, That the present aspect of the colonial settlements at Liberia, furnishes an ample and practical refutation of the prophecies and calumnies of our enemies, and that the industry, temperance, health, and morals of the colonists, while they are eminently favorable to the character of our emigrants, call for devout thanksgiving to God, and should serve to encourage the Society to greater zeal and perseverance in their noble enterprise.

The resolution was sustained by the following address from its mover:

At so late an hour, and in view of the gentlemen whose addresses are anticipated, I know too well what is becoming, to detain the meeting except by a few very brief remarks. These I am induced to make, by the request of your Committee, who have placed in my hands this resolution.

In the history of the American Colonization Society, there is nothing more remarkable, than the numerous conflicts and victories, which have successively followed each other, at almost every step of its benevolent progress. Apart from the novelty and difficulty of the enterprise; the unavoidable disasters which must ever attend upon the effort to plant colonies upon such a barbarous coast as that of Africa; and the embarrassments of the infant Society in undertaking so herculean a task with so limited means, this Institution has encountered the most fierce and formidable obstacles which the craft or malice of its enemies could invent. There have not been wanting a whole tribe of the family of croakers, who have decried the scheme as Utopian, and prophesied certain defeat and ruin to the whole enterprise. Others have been found to deny its political constitutionality, impugn the motives and principles of its founders, and falsely impute a design to trespass upon civil rights. While the recent organised combination, whose hostility to the cause has been proclaimed by the vain and mischievous war-cry of immediate abolition, have not ceased to regard the Colonization scheme as an insurmountable barrier in their way, and hence have conspired for its overthrow.

The resolution alludes to the prophecies and calumnies of this latter class of enemies, which have been as unprovoked as they have been cruel and unjust. But a short time since, a temporary adversity seemed to threaten the Society at home, and a severe epidemic was raging in the Colony, to which a number of the emigrants became victins. This latter event was seized upon with apparent gratification, and in trumpeting it through the land, it was gravely stated by a reverend Divine, and distinguished advocate of the party, that we were sending the hapless descendants of Africa into a second Golgotha, and that such was the sickliness of the Liberian climate, the Asiatic cholera, in all the fury of its desolation, was salubrity itself compared with Monrovia. Sir, this calumny (for such it was and is, though often repeated, and among the means employed to deter our coloured brethren from consent ing to be colonized,) has met its ample and practical refutation by the facts of the case, as they are now spread before the public, and by which it is now established beyond the possibility of denial or doubt, that a degree of exemption from fatal disease, is enjoyed by our colonists, such as this world never witnessed in a newly settled country in any climate. Indeed, such has been the Divine blessing upon a number of the settlements, that the emigrants, after a sufficient trial, are themselves convinced that a better state of health can be enjoyed there, than in those parts of our own country from which they have removed.

In like manner, sir, the Society has been gainsayed, and its colonists slandered, because of some instances of intemperance which occurred in the settlements, and an impression has been created that we were not only ruining our own emigrants by means of ardent spirits, but that by traffic with the na

tives in this article, we were inflicting upon the neighbouring tribes the unutterable withering curse of intoxication and its kindred vices. But this allegation, like the former, has been overthrown, and by the prudent measures of the Society, and the vigilant co-operation of the inhabitants of our Colony, the Temperance reformation has there gained an unexampled triumph, and there is better ground to expect the utter annihilation of the traffic and use of intoxicating drinks from Liberia, than there is to calculate on a similar result in any part of our own country, nearly all the inhabitants being already pledged to total abstinence.

But without alluding to the numerous groundless accusations urged against us by these enemies of the cause, and their confident predictions of the extinction of the Society, and the failure of our enterprise in Africa, it may be in place to refer to the charges of discontent, indolence, and vice, brought in so many forms against the colonists, and which have been refuted by a mass of testimony which is irresistible. It is now proved that the great body of our emigrants in Liberia, are turning their attention to agricultural pursuits, and the first fruits of their industry have been exhibited here in the production of corn, sugar, coffee, cotton, and other useful and profitable commodities, which have already been yielded by that fruitful soil. And it is equally well established that the contentment and happiness of our colonists, is proverbial, while the good morals which reign in Liberia, present a severe rebuke to the inferior morality of most of the districts of our own country even among our white population, a fact which has been attested by numerous and respectable witnesses in Europe and America, who have visited the settlements. But I forbear to dwell upon these topics, and will only express the hope that this Society may still go on and prosper; offering no other reply, no farther vindication, than what its works afford. Facts, stubborn facts, are accumulating every year, which not only serve to stop the mouths of gainsayers of every class, but to multiply the friends of the enterprise in every portion of this land. A brighter day is dawning upon us; the present aspect of the Colony is a bright and cheering one, while recent exhibitions of public liberality inspire renewed hopes of extended usefulness to our own country as well as to África. Yes, sir, God has not given up Africa! but He designs by our instrumentality to enkindle upon her western coast the fires of civilization and the lights of Christianity, which shall not only spread among her degraded sons the blessings of our free institutions, of science and religion, but open an asylum for her long-lost children, whose attractions will soon be so powerful as to draw hundreds of thousands of them to that soil of happiness and freedom. I have no fear that the present repugnance to Africa will long be felt by our coloured population. Sir, their hostility against being removed to Africa is unnatural and artificial. It has been created by calumny and falsehood, else it had never been felt.

"Lives there the man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land?"

And suppose we and our families should be transplanted by some strange providence into central Africa, and suppose one generation should succeed another, while still our race should be kept distinct among the surrounding black population; think you, sir, that our descendants to the latest generation would ever forget that they were strangers in a strange land-that they were Americans, though born in Africa? Can any man believe that they would resist the proposition to remove them from bondage there to liberty here, and complain of expatriation" forsooth? The idea is preposterous and absurd; for every heart will bear me witness that they would still regard this as their "native land." because it was the land of their fathers, and the race with which the God of nature has identified them. Ah, sir, the hearts of our coloured population are cast in the same mould, and if they were unsophisticated, they would hail with acclamation the scheme of this Society, and escape from the snare of blindness and prejudice in which their pseudo friends have entangled them. This will ultimately be the result of our toils and labours, however long the consummation may be postponed by untoward events in Providence, or the malicious devices of our enemies.

I love this Society, because I love the black man with my whole heart. All the sympathies of my nature rally around the coloured race, whether in

our own or in other lands, and for their deep and cruel wrongs, oppressed and downtrodden in the dust as they are here and elsewhere, whether enslaved or nominally free, I feel a gush of emotion which I can neither restrain nor yet describe. Some of the first specimens of the sensibilities of our nature, in all their tenderness and pathos, I have witnessed in my intercourse, professional and otherwise, with this afflicted people. I have seen them pursued by dark events, until misfortune seemed to claim them for its own, and calamity mark them out as its chosen victims. And when maternal love has wrung from the heart of female Africans, withering under affliction and bereavement, the deepest lamentations of which our common nature is susceptible, I have fancied that I could hear them express their anguish in the touching strains of the poet

"Oh! ever thus from childhood's hour

I've seen my fondest hopes decay;

I never lov'd a tree or flow'r,

But 'twas the first to fade away;

I never nurs'd a little one,

To glad me with its soft black eye,

But when it came to know me well,

And love me, it was sure to die."

Surely, sir, we ought to sympathise with the sufferings of our coloured brethren at home and abroad, and I rejoice in this Society, mainly because it is devoted to the benevolent work of" binding up the broken hearted, and raising up the bowed down, and letting the oppressed go free."

In conclusion, I would only add, that I regard this great enterprise as the noblest of all the objects which benevolence and religion have prompted in this Christian land; the noblest of them all, because it comprises them all. Do we desire to promote peace on earth and good will to man? Ours is a Peace Society labouring in a field of wars and bloodshed beyond what is witnessed in any country under heaven. Are we the enemies of the slave trade and slavery itself? Where beneath the sun, is there such slavery of the body and the mind as that which binds the millions of Africa to petty despots, whose deeds of cruelty and blood are "enough to make the cheek of darkness pale"? But our Society aims to break the yoke and let the oppressed go free, and already have we curtailed the horrid slave trade, with a success beyond all the efforts of the civilized world. Are we friends of the Temperance, the Bible, the Tract, the Sunday-school, the Missionary Society? All these are concentrated here, and all these are even now in progress on the darkest spot of earth, through our instrumentality and by the Divine blessing on our infant Colony. And to bless and save that continent of heathenism, we are now humbly endeavouring to communicate both science and religion, education and Christianity. And already does our Colony provide the missionary of the cross not only with a field of labour, but with an open door, a great and effectual one for penetrating a land of barbarians, who for centuries have been utterly inaccessible.

Sir, I am done. Let us still labour and pray, for the cause is good, and the best of all is, that God is with us, and neither Balaam's cursing nor divination will prevail against our Israel.

Dr. REESE's resolution was unanimously adopted.

On motion of GEORGE GRENNELL, Jr., M. C., of Massachusetts, the following resolution, sustained by an address from the mover, was unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That the thanks of this Society are due to the Ministers of the Gospel, of every denomination throughout the Union, who have given their benevolent aid to its funds by taking up collections in their several churches on or about the fourth of July; and that it be respectfully recommended to them to continue the practice annually.

Mr. ZACCHEUS COLLINS LEE, of Baltimore, Maryland, offered the following resolution:

Resolved, That the friends of this Society are urged, by powerful considerations of patriotism and humanity, to exert their influence to form a public sentiment which shall sanction the application of the treasure of the nation to effect, on a large scale, the plan of this Society; and that it be recommended

to the friends of the cause throughout the Union to solicit for this plan the patronage of their respective State Legislatures.

Mr. LEE, in support of his resolution, said that

The period had arrived, in his opinion, when it appeared necessary and just that this Society should present and enforce its claim for the patronage and aid of the Federal and State Legislatures. He therefore deemed it proper to offer at this time and in this place, the resolution just read, and believed the appeal it contemplated would be heard and responded to wherever a sense of justice and philanthropy prevailed. How far it was politic, now, to address ourselves to the Congress of the U. States, was a matter about which there was a difference of opinion among the friends of Colonization. For himself, he saw no sound objections to the exercise by Congress of the powers under the Constitution, of appropriating something out of an overflowing treasury, to the great and beneficent objects of the Society.

Twenty years ago, Mr. President, a few wise and good men assembled in a private apartment of this city, and laid in silence and comparative obscurity the foundations of this Society. They had seen and felt for years, with aların and anxiety, the rapid spread of an anomalous free black population, carrying with it a train of evils which our experience at this time most sincerely deplores; they foresaw the disastrous consequences such an evil, unremedied or unchecked, would produce, not only to the master but the slave. Exiles from social and political privileges they beheld this degraded population-negatively free it is true, yet burdened and bowed down by a heavier load of moral and physical wrongs than their enslaved brethren: and differing from them only in this, that they are "slaves without a master," and bound to those around them by no ties of sympathy or consanguinity. To meliorate, therefore, the condition of this prostrate and outcast race-and to give to them the fruits of liberty, dispensed and received under their "own vines and fig trees"; to afford, in the next place, security to the slaveowners and resignation to the slaves, by removing from them the example and influence of this free black population, acting directly by their corrupting influence on the feelings and passions of the slaves, and indirectly through the thousand channels fanaticism and a false philanthropy were opening; and finally, to vindicate and illustrate the great fundamental principles of liberty upon which our institutions repose, and to the maintenance of which we stood gloriously pledged to the world, by giving true freedom to those who have a right to demand it, and leading ultimately by just and cautious steps (with the full consent of all parties and interests in the country) to the gradual emancipation of those whose servitude is inconsistent with the genius and spirit of our Constitution and our social and national prosperity; were the noble objects of the founders of this Society: and by dedicating it to such purposes, they must command and receive the grati tude of one race and the applause of the other.

Among its founders, your name, sir, is conspicuously enrolled; and that voice which first hailed the birth of South American freedom, and from these walls sent forth her eloquent and soul stirring appeal, has since been often raised in behalf of this Society. Among your associates in this great enterprise are some immortal names: and while man has the spirit to be free, or the virtue to be just, MADISON, MARSHALL, and MONROE, will be the more venerated on this account; for they lived and died the zealous friends of this great charity.

One of these sages, whose spirit has but recently joined those of his ascended compatriots, gave an enduring evidence of his attachment to the Society and its principles, by a liberal bequest, rendered the more touching and impressive from the fact, that the fund to meet it is to be raised out of the publication of the History of the Convention which framed our Constitution, from his own pen.

Thus from the publication and diffusion of this patriotic work, embodying as it will the spirit and principles of American Liberty, has this beloved Fa ther of the Constitution reflected his own opinions of our Society, and attested the sincerity and fervour of his support to it while he lived, by devoting this great tribute of his pen to its aid after his death.

Is there not abundant reason to believe, that in some of the larger Commonwealths of the South the cause of Colonization is gaining ground? The Re port just read informs us that several wealthy Planters of that section have

already manumitted their slaves for the purpose of conveying them, through the means of this Society, to Liberia; while others are fast yielding their prejudices and becoming the friends and patrons of the Colonization scheme.And why should the enlightened of any part of the country hesitate? Colonization, as our Society professes it, is not, sir, that bugbear conjured up, as fanatics charge, to disturb the tenure between master and slave. It is a mild, prudent, and safe principle, which meditates great ultimate good to the masters and the slaves, with the full consent of the former, and without infringing upon or questioning vested rights. Unlike the exciting, imprudent, and unsafe expedients of abolitionism, it inflicts no injury on the slave, in the efforts to emancipate him; nor fastens closer on him the fetters it could not break; leaving the enthralled to the slow but just operation of a sound public sentiment on the subject, which must ere long lead to their redemption. Our Society is now labouring to prepare for them a republic and home in the land of their fathers, where neither

The oppressor's wrongs,

The proud man's contumely,"

can follow or assail them; and thus hold out to those already free or emancipated, strong inducements to leave this and fly on the wings of this Society to a better and freer country for them; and also appeals by the strongest motives of interest and mercy to the slaveholder to liberate his slaves and aid in their removal.

The Report also informs us, that there are at this time upwards of 3000 emigrants at the Colony, partaking all the blessings of civilization and freedom: And there, where the accursed slave trade 20 years ago raised its bloody banner and desolated the coasts of Africa, you behold now, civilized, educated, erect man, walking abroad in his own majesty, bearing on his brow the stamp of freedom, and in his hands the charter of human rights.

Africa is rising up from the sleep of barbarism; temples of religion and songs of praise are seen and heard in her valleys and on her mountains,

Star eyed Science seeks her votaries there."

Already schools and colleges are thronged by her sons and daughters; commerce and trade are extending their enterprises; and indeed to one unaccustomed to such a spectacle, it would seem that some enchanter's wand had been waved over that benighted land: for lo! "it blooms and blossoms like the rose"; her rocks have been struck, and the waters of life and knowledge are gushing forth; her dead form has been reanimated, and Africa will be redeemed.

Who then, sir, can behold all this, and not bless the motives and acts of this Society?-and may we not certainly contemplate the period when the whole of this ill-fated continent shall participate in those blessings of civilization and knowledge (now enjoyed by the Colony) which more favored regions realize? It was the cradle of creation; light first broke upon the world, and the morning first blesses with its beams her borders-but makes her misery and darkness more mournfully visible. Let us, the new Western Hemisphere, send back the ever-burning lights of Christianity and peace to her.

Nos.....primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis

Illic sera rubens accendit lumina vesper.

The venerable gentleman who first addressed you (Dr. Proudfit of N. York) justly remarked that the benevolence of this Society could not at this day be truly estimated. He is right, sir; for until that great continent shall be brought into the family of nations, and those beautiful vallies mentioned in the Report-where Nature has been prodigal in her gifts to man, but he, alas! is little less than the cannibal torturing and devouring human flesh; till the light of this Colony, like Bethlehem's star, shall penetrate and give salvation to this people; then and not till then, can the value and benevolence of this great charity be fully felt.

How appropriate, at this time, would be the dedication of a part of the surplus revenue arising from the sale of the public lands, to the objects of this Society; thus making the soil once cultivated by the slave, contribute to his final disenthralment and removal to a free and happy country. Let us therefore hope that the enlightened patriotism of our rulers and legislators will ere long accomplish this desirable purpose.

On this interesting subject coming events, which are casting their shadows so darkly before them, must ere long force the conviction on the minds of all,